Obama owes no apology for his pastor's sermons

March 23, 2008

By Andrea Collier Post-Tribune columnist

My husband has a 5-year-old nephew who says "you're riling me" when he thinks people are deliberately stressing him out. When it comes to race, America, you are riling me.

This past week we have demanded that a presidential candidate get off point in terms of what he wants to do to run this country to fight for his political life and cut his friend off at the knees in the case of Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. We demand this so we can feel comfortable, all because we don't know how to dialogue about our differences and the way our country has dealt with those differences.

I write this from a hotel that faces the Fox Theater in Atlanta. It is the historic theater where, at the premier of "Gone With The Wind," where the colored people had to see the movie in the balcony -- including the woman who would win an Oscar for her performance. It is also the place where much of the Rev. Martin Luther King's strategy was formed. It occurs to me that if there had been CNN or YouTube tracking his every word, history may have judged him in a harsher light. It also reminds me that for years, the King was viewed by whites as a threat to American society.

When I was a kid in the late '50s and early '60s, we went to church on Sunday to talk about God. But we also went to church in the evenings to paint flyers, to hear speakers and to get fired up. I was a little girl fired up. "What do we want? Freedom!," I'd say holding a picket sign. "When do we want it? Now." I am ever aware that generations of my family paid a high price for me to enjoy the life I live now. I never take it for granted. All over this country, it was the preachers who would give passionate speeches and make bold calls to action. For us, the American dream was born and realized in the basements of the black churches. The fear of the dream realized made people burn churches, bomb them -- in my lifetime.

If Wright has said things to offend white America, it is up to him to apologize -- or not. I remind you that Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro has said much about race. And she was very clear that she meant it. Not only did she get a pass, but nobody is holding Clinton's feet to the fire for what she said.

So, in 2008, America is outraged at an old-school preacher who speaks about the country as he sees it. We have tried to force Obama into a Sophie's choice of sorts. Choose. Discredit. Distance. Whatever we are so mad about, Obama didn't say it. He doesn't need to apologize for it. We all have relatives, friends, and ministers that we don't agree with all the time. But we know that we don't have to erase them from our lives to be seen as a viable, respectable human being--unless you are a black man running for president. Because if you are going to be a viable candidate, we need to know that your life is free of any black people who still have anger or hurt at the past. You can't associate with anybody who is so frustrated at the slowness of the progress.

I am black. I am a woman. I am a mother, a daughter, a wife and a friend. To discount any of these things is to diminish who I am. I am a citizen of the world and want to leave it in a better place than when I arrived here. No apologies necessary.

Andrea King Collier is a Gary native who lives in Lansing, Mich.